in a new region larger than France. Sebituane,
at the same time, rooted out hordes of bloody savages,
among whom no white man could have gone without leaving
his skull to ornament some village. He opened
up the way for me—let us hope also for
the Bible. Then, again, while I was laboring
at Kolobeng, seeing only a small arc of the cycle of
Providence, I could not understand it, and felt inclined
to ascribe our successive and prolonged droughts to
the wicked one. But when forced by these and
the Boers to become explorer, and open a new country
in the north rather than set my face southward, where
missionaries are not needed, the gracious Spirit of
God influenced the minds of the heathen to regard
me with favor; the Divine hand is again perceived.
Then I turned away westward rather than in the opposite
direction, chiefly from observing that some native
Portuguese, though influenced by the hope of a reward
from their government to cross the continent, had been
obliged to return from the east without accomplishing
their object. Had I gone at first in the eastern
direction, which the course of the great Leeambye
seemed to invite, I should have come among the belligerents
near Tete when the war was raging at its height, instead
of, as it happened, when all was over. And again,
when enabled to reach Loanda, the resolution to do
my duty by going back to Linyanti probably saved me
from the fate of my papers in the “Forerunner”.
And then, last of all, this new country is partially
opened to the sympathies of Christendom, and I find
that Sechele himself has, though unbidden by man, been
teaching his own people. In fact, he has been
doing all that I was prevented from doing, and I have
been employed in exploring—a work I had
no previous intention of performing. I think that
I see the operation of the unseen hand in all this,
and I humbly hope that it will still guide me to do
good in my day and generation in Africa.
Viewing the success awarded to opening up the new
country as a development of Divine Providence in relation
to the African family, the mind naturally turns to
the probable influence it may have on negro slavery,
and more especially on the practice of it by a large
portion of our own race. We now demand increased
supplies of cotton and sugar, and then reprobate the
means our American brethren adopt to supply our wants.
We claim a right to speak about this evil, and also
to act in reference to its removal, the more especially
because we are of one blood. It is on the Anglo-American
race that the hopes of the world for liberty and progress
rest. Now it is very grievous to find one portion
of this race practicing the gigantic evil, and the
other aiding, by increased demands for the produce
of slave labor, in perpetuating the enormous wrong.
The Mauritius, a mere speck on the ocean, yields sugar,
by means of guano, improved machinery, and free labor,
equal in amount to one fourth part of the entire consumption
of Great Britain. On that island land is excessively